A Dentist’s online porn cruising shatters a practice and exposes the blurry legal lines over what’s not safe for work

Spotted in January 2009, she was sitting on a table thrusting a D-size chest outward, and her arrival quickly erupted in scandal. But for some black strips over her most intimate body parts, she sat naked on the computer screen, hands on the table, head rolled back.

She was only an image, more burlesque than hard-core, but set against the cheerful yellow walls and pastel accents in the offices of Drs. Douglas Boyd, William Underwood, and Terry Isom, the scene was just plain wrong. Enid Webb, a no-nonsense dental hygienist and one of the 20-person, all-female support staff, stumbled onto the electronic interloper during a 9:30 a.m. break between patients as she went searching for a cup of tea down the long hall past the examining rooms. Straight ahead, just before the turnoff to the break room, she saw Isom alone in the dentists’ shared office keeping company with the blonde.

“The door is open,” said Webb, “and I glance in like I’ve done 100 times before, and there he is at his desk with the door open staring at this pornographic pose of a woman on the computer screen.” Shocked, she urged dental assistant Shannon Riverman to have a look. Within minutes, the two were huddled with a colleague in the break room, embarrassed, with Webb fearing a repeat of an even uglier moment she knew had happened nine months earlier, when another worker wandered through an office door and interrupted Isom viewing porn and masturbating.

According to an interview in a later investigation by the Oregon Board of Dentistry, during that incident Isom slammed the laptop shut, stood up and silently faced the female employee, then zipped up his pants. A day or so later, according to the transcript, Isom brought up the incident and apologized when alone with the woman in an office emptied after closing time.

Boyd assured the woman that he had had a serious conversation with Isom, warning him of the severe consequences he would face if such behavior should surface again. Isom, he said, was humble and apologetic. But the episode had left a deep mark on the small circle who knew of it.

The dentists were not partners, just independent practitioners who shared staff, referrals, and space in two offices. But Boyd and Underwood, who had a 29-year history together compared to only 12 years with Isom, feared a sexual harassment lawsuit. After the second pornography incident, the two doctors allowed no strike three. They gave Isom two weeks to collect his things, changed the locks, threw away Isom’s business cards, and took his name off the doors of the offices they had shared for more than a decade.

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